


I'll always remember three days in Rome

by Hieiandshino



Category: Avengers (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Development, Coping Mechanisms, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, Developing Relationship, Disabled Character, Editor Pietro Maximoff, F/M, Gen, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, What Have I Done, What Was I Thinking?, Writer Clint Barton, implied at least - Freeform, or so i hope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3884950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hieiandshino/pseuds/Hieiandshino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Clint's first inspiration for it begins after he gets out of the hospital.</i>
</p><p>OR the one in which Fraction's <i>Hawkeye</i> run still happens in an universe with no superheroes and Clint Barton copes with the consequences by writing a book.</p><p>(Unrevised work)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Marvel (all media types) does not belong to me.
> 
> Title comes from the song "The Book", by Sheryl Cole.
> 
> This fanfic was unrevised and, because my first language isn't English, there will be mistakes.
> 
> **Forever thanking DuendeJunior. You are the beauty and the beast, because while you were always here to read my Clint/Pietro and help me with my fanfics you never stopped me once. I both thank you and hate you. However, I love you more.**
> 
>  **EDIT** I had to edit some things in this fanfic because I was wrong. I was wrong because when I read _Hawkeye #15_ I did not notice Clint Barton was hurt in both ears, only in one. To make matters worse, I did not read _Hawkeye #19_ and only noticed it when I noticed Clint Barton, to practically EVERYONE was 100% deaf. I have read #15 and #19 and now I am sorry for making half deaf of only one ear.  
>  I know I could have left Clint Barton deaf from just one ear. It would have been the best option, since the entire fanfic I had this certainty that Clint could still hear from one ear and therefore I planned dialogues and dialogues and moments in which people would talk about their problems and he would listen.  
> I, however, am someone who prides myself on reading and researching and following the canon ( _minus Pietro and Wanda not being Magneto's children. THIS IS BLASPHEMY_ ), so I decided to adapt my whole fanfic on the idea that Clint is 100% deaf. I won't take this away from a minority that sees themselves on a character. They may never read my fanfic, but I like to know that I did them justice instead of erasing them or diminishing Clint's injuries and hearing loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FRACTION'S RUN**  
>  \- Clint ends up in a conflict with the Russian mafia as he forcibly buys an apartment that the Russians ownbed and that they wanted to evict the tenants so they could sell the whole area. You may remember the series _Daredevil_ and think of that.  
>  \- During this conflict he also gets a dog.  
> \- He meets a girl named Penny that sells his car to him (after she slept with him). Later, she comes back and asks for Clint's help to steal a strong-box from a strip club. There, she leaves him behind.  
> \- During their time apart, Penny sent Clint some comic books that he read and put out of order. The sequence of comics were the password to open the strong-box that now is lost. IDK either. She leaves the strong-box with him.  
> \- One of Clint's friends at the apartment building is killed. We discover that the oldest lady there is part of the Russian mafia.  
> \- Clint's brother Barney Barton comes to live with him.  
> \- They set a trap for the killer, but it fails and this man puts an arrow in each of Clint's ears and shoots Barney three times. - Clint is deaf and Barney is in a wheelchair.  
> \- Kate Bishop is a second Hawkeye, who helps Clint at the beginning, but that later leaves him for a road trip that goes very wrong. She leaves with Clint's dog.

Clint's first inspiration for it begins after he gets out of the hospital. The second time he gets out of the hospital, to be more precise. Together with his brother, Barney, they scrape what little dignity they have left from the sidewalk and crawl back to his ( _their? No, definitely his_ ) apartment on Brooklyn. It still looks the same as it did a few months before, standing tall and still, with its tenants more quiet than usual, with the death of Grills and the attacks on both Clint and Barney, their only hope, still fresh on their minds. Clint would like to say he is done with this bullshit, but the truth is that he still doesn't want to give up. He is a hard head and hearing or not ( _not, not hearing at all and Clint feels more alone than ever_ ), he still is a fighter. Both his brother and he. He won't give up.

Still, the first day after they arrive is hard. Barney tries his best to understand what is to live in a wheelchair and fails completely. They live on the last floor of the apartment and have no elevator in the building. Barney tries to do it by himself, to ride himself in that wheelchair up to the fourth floor as if it is no big deal. It takes half an hour for him to understand he can't and even more for him to ask Clint for help, his movements of hand and fingers strained, his face angry and his eyes looking everywhere but his brother. It becomes worse when they have to call half of the building to help him all through those stairs, and then Barney just decides he doesn't want to leave his bedroom not even to eat. Clint laughs it off and jokes about it, knowing that teasing is more welcome than pity — pity is something the Bartons never learned to take well and it's not like they _want_ to learn. Pity is a horrifying concept for them and it is the main reason Clint turned his cell phone off.

He has no idea of what he is saying is actually what he is thinking he is saying, since not even his own voice reach can be heard.

Though Clint hasn't lost as much as Barney, he finds himself unable to sleep over utter fear of being caught by the people that want them dead. The hospital had police officers watching their back, thanks to Natasha and Bobbi, besides his own connections in New York, but in their ( _their, not his_ ) apartment Clint finds himself alone and afraid to sleep with or without the help of medication. Clint imagines himself falling asleep and his apartment being broken into. He imagines himself not waking up because he would not be able to hear. He imagines people slowly creeping into his brother's room and killing him and Clint — Clint Barton, who began this whole mess — not hearing a thing because he is deaf. Because he can't hear a thing.

It sounds silly and it's not something the people Clint has been dealing with would do, but anyone with Clint's imagination and with all that he has seen in his life as a black-op for S.H.I.E.L.D. would have insomnia too.

So he finds himself awake at 3am, the day after he left the hospital for good, researching about sleep deprivation and its consequences while drinking coffee from the coffee pot. Clint is looking for possible exercises to be able to sleep at night when it hits him that this isn't what he wants for his life: to search for cures for PTSD in the middle of the night and ignore all the problems he has. Like the PTSD, that won't go away just because he was able to get some sleep. Like the fact he may never work for S.H.I.E.L.D. ever again, because a black-ops that can't stand down when he is told, when he isn't even working, and that is now deaf ( _now he definitely cannot hear everyone’s orders_ ). Like the fact that he was told by Rogers that if he pulled another of his stunts after the strip club incident, he wouldn't go back to S.H.I.E.L.D. and he said he listened and then did this.

Or someone did this to him. Clint doesn’t remember who did the first-second-third strike after Grills’s death. He is pretty sure he didn’t do anything after, only tried to protect the building from another death, but maybe he did something so subtle he does not remember. It doesn’t matter, anymore, he realizes.

That is when it hits him. The strip club incident that wasn't exactly connected but still was. Located in one of the worst parts of New York City ( _and that was_ bad _in terms of strip clubs_ ), run by the Russian mob. All those shades of red, all those shades of pink, all those lights that, for a moment — though not long enough — blinded him. Too much light for a place like that, too little exits because no one was crazy to get in there and get into a fight. Penny. Her sweet red ride he bought a few months before. The smell of gunpowder still on the air, even though the bullet was released hours before, inside that little room with no windows. The old man in white and the red strong-box, the one he almost missed because it was close to the also red wall. Police sirens. The butt of the gun against his face, the cuffs on his wrists and the mysterious and indifferent expression on Penny's face before she slipped out of the room with the strong-box in her hands. The way her hair moved as she walked away in that ridiculous small outfit. The way she never glanced back. The certainty that Clint would never see her again and that he just got played by what seemed like an innocent girl.

Clint closes the tab about sleeping exercises on purpose ( _shut up, it was_ ) and turns to look at the bookshelf at the other side of the apartment, next to the main window. His book collection is poor at best, with most titles being given for him by Nat and Bobbi — the last giving them because she felt rather bad she got most of the books after their divorce, though they were all hers to begin with — but he takes pride in his comic book and graphic novels collection. Some of it that is being supported by the red strong-box Penny left with him after she couldn't open it, thanks to Clint. Part of him is glad she failed in her mission after she fucked with him, but part of him felt bad for it, since she had to have a reason to steal it. It was her fault she didn't tell him about the comic books in time. Like, he wouldn't have read it if he knew they were that important ( _he would at least leave it on the right order_ ).

The strong-box is smaller than he remembers, but it's heavy and imposing just the way something evil would be. Clint thinks it may be a horcrux and laughs a little about it as he wraps his arms around it and takes it from the shelf to the kitchen counter, where his notebook is. He puts it by his side and reaches for the coffee again. It is cold and horrible, truly horrible, but he ignores the taste as he looks at it: the red thing in his almost monochromatic kitchen. The red thing that only added to his problems with the Russian mafia. The red thing that remembered a thousand redheads and that should have made Clint know it would end badly.

Honestly, Clint doesn't know how it happened either. He imagines what could be in there, and the options are many. A secret, a photography, a letter from a lover. Something more dangerous; something more subtle. Money or a file; the receipt from the childhood of the old man in the white suit; codes from something Clint would rather not think about. The story and history of the man that caused so much grief to Clint ( _nothing on the internet, nothing Nat would give him_ ). The name of the assassin that took Barney's legs and Clint’s ears.

_This could be a science fiction book_ , Clint thinks and turns to his notebook. He opens a new tab and searches for support groups in Brooklyn for Army veterans, wondering if Karla Sofen would let him mark an appointment after he bailed her so many times; wonders if she would listen to him after he had sex with her and then disappeared from his life. He searches for her name and finds out he dodged a bullet. Then, he starts thinking if he will ever meet someone _normal_ in his life. At the same time, he opens his Word for no reason. He barely thinks about it, other than the fact that his story would be better than _American Sniper_. A part of him doesn't want to tell this story as a biography. A part of him doesn't even know if he wants to tell it to someone.

_Couldn't hurt_ , he thinks for a moment, and writes 'by Clinton Francis Barton' on the first line, not even bothering to write a title. It's not a story, though it could be. Like him, this could be so many things. Right now, he names it a distraction and touches the letters on his keyboard, almost as if he is searching for the one to start telling no one about what happened to him. He writes 'My name is Clint Barton' and deletes it, knowing it is too tacky and not really wanting to talk about this like a comic book would do. Then, he writes 'My mother is dead and my father was a drunken dude. I lost my hearing and my brother got shot three times because of me and never will walk again. I don't know why.' Clint deletes it. 'People around me have to learn language signs or learn how to talk always looking at me and slow enough so I can read their lips.' Deletes it again. 'I'm afraid my brother will fall into depression because of what happened to him. It will all be my fault.' Deletes it as fast as he writes it and holds back the tears, the lump in his throat, the way he is gasping for air for holding back his breath for so long. He tries so hard to ignore the fact he feels his chest heaving, but he cannot hear what is happening around him. The sounds his body is making.

Clint breathes in and out and licks his lips. The taste of coffee becomes strong in his mouth again and he feels like he needs to drink some water. Wonders if it is because he is sleep deprived. Wonders if this thirsty isn't just a side effect from his PTSD that leaves him feeling like he is drowning on a good day. Decides he is just deflecting the fact he is trying to deal with everything all by himself and that he doesn't want to write about this. Not about everything he did in his life. He would probably win a Pulitzer and be declared an enemy of the States. So he deletes his name and writes 'What do I want to write about?'. Yes, what someone who never went to college, barely finished his high school before he entered the Army to leave his violent home could want to ( _be able to_ ) write? He doesn't think much about it. 'About the red safe', he writes under it. _About me drowning and still wishing for a glass of water_ , he thinks.

He doesn't write that day. Night. Whatever. Instead, he spends more time researching about surviving in the ocean and death by drowning and making lists and lists in his mind about all the things he has to do tomorrow and that he really needs to sleep to do them. However, the imagery of a man clutching a purple safe ( _his favorite color_ ), refusing to let go of it and save himself is enough to have him going. Through the night, though he doesn't notices it, only startles when a small paper ball is thrown at him. He looks up, rapidly blinking by all the light inside the apartment and wondering when the hell he missed the morning arriving. It is still far too early, which means Barney hasn't slept much or at all either. Barney, who is waiting by the stairs for something and then throws another paper ball, saying "Morning" ( _Clint doesn't hear, but his eyes, his eyes are still good and he knows the movement of Barney’s lips as he uses certain words that are so, so familiar_ ). Clint blinks, wondering why his brother isn't moving and then remembers. Understands the paper balls. Clint looks back at his research and closes the notebook, moving from the kitchen and walking up the stairs. They still aren't used with the fact one is paraplegic and the other can't hear the way he did before ( _Barney could jump from building to building and Clint, oh Clint could hear a needle falling in the next room, because they were Army kids and then Army men_ ).

"Morning." Clint says and wills himself the strength to not start crying. To not confess to Barney that he doesn't know how they'll deal with this. To not blow his own brain because this, this brother that can't run anymore is all because of him. "I found a support group to veterans."

He sees the way Barney slowly nods with his head, hesitating. Barney has a notebook in his hands, together with a pen. He writes: _I am going to make some calls today to see how we can make this building and this apartment better for me to live on it._ Barney answers by writing, so fast Clint has to read a few more times before he gets it. Clint flinches and wants to say he doesn’t have to write everything down or everything so hastily, trying so hard to mimic their talking from before, but truth is, he appreciates it. Barney will notice it on his own. He always learned how to interact with Clint without Clint having to guide him step by step ( _he appreciates this, because the Army never learned how to_ stop _commenting the fact they were okay with Clint's bisexuality after DADT was overruled_ ). "I think we'll be evicted before this." He says. The Russians won't stop now that they took down them. They will have the apartment building, eventually.

_No._ Barney writes, his fingers clutching the pen so hard they’re white. _We'll stay. Now more than ever._

Clint moves Barney through the first step and they both freeze for a moment, not used. Barney nods after a while and they keep going down, down, down. It's sloppy, but they'll get better. They're not leaving, apparently.

But someone else would, he thinks absently. A teenager leaving New York for somewhere warmer. To find themselves. The same way Clint did after his father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I shouldn't post this because I don't know what I am doing or writing, but I love this story and I love you guys here is a gift I'm sorry.


	2. One

Writing a story, Clint would find out, is harder than he thought. He starts well, writes down everything he wants to write, every trait he wants to give the girl and the dog and wherever they will travel to. Then, he thinks of the reasons why so many people would kill for a red chest, why they would care so much. He finds himself having more and more ideas as he moves around or does something else — something that is not cleaning his house, though — so he starts taking with him small notebooks to write down something _really_ goodthat makes Barney lift his eyebrows whenever he sees it, but he says nothing.

Clint has too much free time now that he left the Army for good. S.H.I.E.L.D. did not even bother to see if he was fine and it hurts, yes, but it doesn’t make him try to get back to all that, so that’s a good thing. To fill up his spare time, Clint makes a list of things he can do now that he is retired. He takes as much sign language classes as he can while Barney learns to have a relationship with a woman that not only does not ignore his bullshit, but is _sane_ and has two children. It is a crazy, ridiculous change for them both. The money they get from the government is good enough, though — it had to be; Clint and Barney gave their whole lives for that shit and went overseas to do things that they cannot even think remember that it will be considered _treason_ —, and for now they have not been bothered by the Russians, so that is a plus.

Clint takes archery lessons again and he discovers he missed it _too much_. Archery is all about hitting a target and while people tend to overthink, it quiets his mind. It also gave him the necessary skills to join the army and later S.H.I.E.L.D., and goes to anonymous groups to treat his PTSD together with other veterans. The rest of the time he uses to write.

Not that he has been doing this a lot, these days. His biggest mistake is to enter a library and wander around the books that were _supposed_ to help the writing process. However, they only slow him down as Clint notices he has not read the canon as the books keep mentioning he should do. Also, the idea that no book is original and is part of a series of tropes makes Clint wonder why he is even trying to write something. Why would he bother doing something others have done and probably better?

He finds himself staring more and more the blank pages and wondering what he should do now — what is the next step on the books? What trope is that he wants to do right now? How to avoid it? Clint considers let the story go and focus on other things, but the story refuses to leave him.

Still, Clint learns a lot. Now he actually knows how to do a proper timeline of events and to organize the little snippets he has written already but that are not yet part of the story. He also starts reading more books, _amazing_ books, and trying to write more and more every day to become not a _hobby_ , but a routine, which helps him at sorting out his _daily_ routine with all his appointments. Clint finds himself discovering he cannot plan too much ahead. His good ideas only come to him as he is writing and it sounds like him alright: after so much time being black-ops, he knows how to stick to the plan, but also to not expect that things will always be perfect.

While writing, things are never perfect.

There are blank spaces on his own phrases, words that he does not know if are the best ones to use but that the synonyms he searches on online dictionaries do not match what he wants to express either. Clint writes and deletes, writes and deletes, screams, tries to write on paper, fails to write on paper, screams some more, writes and deletes, has inspiration, get distracted by surfing on the net, writes and deletes. Writes and move on. It is tiring and stressing in a way that takes his mind away from things and helps him sleep better at night.

He does not remember what he dreams.

Clint has not told anyone about his book, not even Barney. It just does not feel right to tell someone else, a stranger, the people he sees in every meeting he goes weekly that he is writing a book about a girl that loves purple, that once was rich, has a dog and found herself stranded on a different state and city without any money to go by “[for some reason I have to find]”. It feels like he is betraying the girl, the one he has not decided which name he should use. Telling her story when it is not done makes Clint feel as if he will lose her forever, so he just keeps quiet and figures it out the stuff for the plot and ignores how to figure it out his life outside the Army, outside S.H.I.E.L.D.. Writing is a mystery, Clint finds out soon enough, and does not know how people can make a living out of it.

Barney does not care. He watches, he ignores, but he does not try to find out what Clint is writing. At the beginning he probably thought it was a suicide letter ( _hell, he felt like doing one after he noticed he had no idea what he was doing with the girl and the dog and had just an idea of travelling as a plot_ ), but nobody gets that engrossed on something before dying and Clint should know; it is not as if he had not thought about this before.

By the second month and a hundred pages in — a black gay couple that live next the girl’s trailer and a detective have been added in, together with a woman that is mysterious and utterly attractive to the girl ( _this comes out of nowhere but made sense just like it made sense when that guy winked at him when Clint was sixteen and kissed him two months later_ ) —, Clint is approached by one of the members of the PTSD’s support group for veterans.

His name is Sam Wilson, he is a beautiful black man with a perfect smile that makes Clint want to _trust_ him as he asks Clint why he has never spoken about anything. Clint shrugs because there is no necessity of talking about anything. He is getting by with his new routine.

“Whenever you feel ready.” Wilson says, as if he has read Clint’s expression. “You can always talk. Remember that.”

Clint nods and leaves, his brother already near the door. They have the same group reunions and the same activities, except that Clint’s dates are with an underage girl that he created ( _or, as he thinks more and more, was always there in his mind_ ), while Simone is real and too perfect in her flawed world to Barney. Barney does not ask what that was about and Clint does not tell. They leave in silence, the taxi driver not even bothering to talk. It has always been like this between them.

Clint sits down this same day by the kitchen counter and only stops writing when he cannot see straight. He looks at the clock and it is five in the morning. He takes his notebook with him to the living room and puts it on the coffee table before crawling on the couch and sleeping there. Barney has better adapted to the wheelchair and now they have one of those machines that help him move from upstairs to downstairs, he does not need to ask Clint’s help. Barney still wakes his Clint up when it is 8am and tells him to sleep upstairs because nobody needs to see him in that pathetic form.

He skips archery, he skips another meeting, he skips everything the day after his conversation with Sam Wilson. Minus writing. He does that every day, and learns from those writing books he keeps reading — even though they almost made him give up — that sometimes it is good to write something else, like a short story. So he tries to do this before giving up and going back to his original inspiration ( _inspiration is a myth to some while others think it is the thing that makes you want to write a story. You can’t just count on it to keep writing because it always leaves you, unless you keep yourself on that vibe, by writing it every day. Clint may have this written on a notebook he always keeps with him_ ).

Now that he knows what he is doing, it is easier to navigate around all the advices and not just try and fail, try and fail, find success by accident and sticking to it until he cannot do it anymore. It is tiring, however, and he understands why people care so much about the time they have to do particular, personal, important things that to others look like a waste of time. Like that girl from that movie about cooking, with Meryl Streep on it.

He finds his true villain in the form of a dangerous, sociopathic woman with scars on her face. She uses a golden mask “[FOR REASONS]”. Clint then has to go back to the very beginning of the story to introduce her and finds himself rewriting some things, adding others and finally coming up with the name of the girl and the best background he could find: Kate Bishop, daughter of a billionaire and that takes archery lessons every summer, finds herself going to California to have some ‘me time’ after her father marries a girl the same age as her. She takes a dog she had just rescued with her, whose name was Arrow ( _Clint sucks at naming things_ ), but finds herself meeting this mysterious scarred woman that ends up having a feud with the young Bishop “[FOR REASONS PART TWO]”.

Clint never said he found the solution to _every_ problem of his story. All these new things are enough to add more pages on his book. It makes him feel like he has an actual thing in his hands. As soon as he thinks that he knows he will not stop at just one story because one book is not just enough to conclude Kate’s story. And he knows that this is a trap, like taking another shot of tequila and then another one and then another one, but writing is not as bad as drinking and—

—And he doesn’t _mind_. Clint likes Kate. Clint likes writing. He does not know what to say about his writing style. In fact, he thinks that the way he uses words is _shitty_ at best, but it makes him feel good. Besides, if he can write one, he can write two, right? And after the first one it will be easier. Yep, it will.

 _Let’s finish this one, okay_ , he says to himself and types and types and types. Clint writes and researches and reads more books. Books about girls, books about writing, books about books about writing girls. He gets it pretty quickly that most young adult novels are not what he wants on his life and since Kate _is_ bisexual, he starts looking up more and more novels with protagonists from the LGBTQA+ community. He reads whatever he can put his hand into it and suddenly he is reading about online feminism and articles on oppression and, yeah, maybe he should ask Aimee.

And then he looks up from his notebook, from where he is by the counter — still on the counter, he will always be on that counter, he will make love to that counter. Clint tried unsuccessfully moving from the counter to the sofa and later on to his bedroom, to the point he actually bough furniture ( _a table and a chair_ ) but it was of no use; the counter is where it all begun and it will be where he will stay forever — and notices that it has been six months since the incident. The Russians have not bothered yet and Clint has this distinct feeling that it is all Natasha’s fault. She seems to excel on those things.

Six months. Six _months_. _Six_ months.

That is a lot of time.

Clint did well, did better, but he knows he still has not recovered. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and stares at the window, or spends almost a whole day on the emergency stairs outside his building and watches the street. Most times he drinks coffee, sucks it up and _writes_ , but he feels anxious and afraid of what will happen when he concludes Kate’s story and does not come up with another story to write about — it is a possibility.

That is why it is a surprise when he openly talks about it on the next meeting of the veterans. “Hi.” He says, his voice a little too loud as he stands up from his chair so everyone can hear. Everyone, Sam Wilson most of all, looks at him. Barney is mostly confused, but supportive too. “My name is Clint and I am deaf.” Some people start with telling they have PTSD, some people start saying they have drinking problems, drug problems, problems with anger, anxiety, eating disorders, depression etc. He wonders if he has depression, knows he has PTSD and anxiety. Still, he tells everyone he is deaf. “It didn’t happen in the war. I didn’t go to the war. It’s been years since that. I was assigned specific missions and then I would come back here.” Clint was privileged in ways Barney wasn’t ( _Barney became a mercenary after flunking out of the Army after a particular bad mission he never told anyone about it_ ). “I was attacked at home.” Some people gasp, some people clench their fist. Clint closes his eyes and tells then everything.

Almost everything.

Okay, just a little about everything that happened in his life. However, he does say it and he feels better, more open and less guilty. Even willing to look out for some treatment outside meetings and archery lessons and writing ( _he does not know how long it will last_ ). Clint tells them about his dreams, about his difficulties as he adapts to a life in which he cannot rely on his ears, how he misses songs and birds and the sound of hitting a target with an arrow. Sometimes, he tells them, he feels life crying about what he has lost, but it feels so _small_ he feels guilty. And he does not cry anyway.

He is used to being broken and beaten and falling very hard, metaphorically; Clint just never expected it would take so much time to get on his feet — this, he does not tell anyone.

Clint tells them he has started writing things and that it helps, but he fears the moment when he will not be able to do it anymore. It scares him shitless. He tells them about waking up and watching the streets, about how he still fears someone will enter his house at night and he will not hear a thing, about how the threat is still _there_ and he does not know how to stop.

When it is over, Clint is tired and happy and people applaud him.

He does not hear it.

That day, he sits down and notices Kate’s first adventure has just finished. He puts the last word, the last dot and the _“_ **TO BE CONTINUED** ” because he has no idea what to put when this happens, and just stares at these words.

Stares and stares and stares and remembers how everyone applauded him. Clint closes his eyes and tries to remember the sound of it. They say sound is the first thing you forget and it is true; he almost misses it, thinks that he got it wrong, but the memory of the rhythm and the memory of what happened that same day are there, behind his eyelids, and they _fit_.

Then, he opens his eyes and saves it because _fuck_. First rule, man.


	3. two

Clint wakes up one day and there is the smell of strong coffee filling his lungs. In a perfect world, he would have sighed and gone back to sleep, but this is his life, so he wakes up alarmed, throwing his blankets on the floor and trying to get up as fast as he can. One of his legs get stuck on the duvet and he falls face down on the floor. His heart is racing and he knows he isn’t breathing at all. He sees the door, he thinks of Barney, knows it isn’t Barney because he is in another apartment, with Simone and her kids.

This is it, isn’t it? What he has been fearing all this time. He didn’t hear them. He didn’t hear them and they _knew_ and this is them mocking him, this is them killing him after making coffee in his broke as fuck coffee machine. This is them—

He reaches underneath his mattress, finds the gun he hid in there and crashes through the door, pointing it at the kitchen, having a visual advantage from where he stands.

A gun is been pointed right back at him, but the person behind is no Russian.

Only, you know, she is.

 _Drop it, Clint_ , Natasha Romanova signs to him. Her movements are so precise he obeys without questioning. _When did you learn how to sign?_ , he asks her with clumsy movements.

Nat smirks at him and turns away to pour some coffee for them. Clint smells something underneath the strong scent of his savior: sweet perfume. Not hers, but from her favorite bakery. She used to buy things there when she lived nearby and they used to date. It was the closest to _homey_ he ever saw her, but now she seems to be dating a lawyer from Hell’s Kitchen and word is she cooked him some Sunday food after they went to the church.

Clint walks down the stairs in a steady pace. A little faster than he is used, but that bakery is just _so great_. He cannot help but run a little bit. She puts his food on a plate and gives him a fork and a knife, and Clint snorts at her.

“Ever the caveman, I see.” Nat says when they are close enough for him to read her lips. She smirks again when he arches an eyebrow as she picks a bagel with her hands, no plate, no knife, no fork. And yet she is capable of eating it with the same grace she would use to eat a five-course meal.

He doesn’t botter. “What are you doing here?” He asks and she flinches a little. Clint grimaces but understands what this mean. Before, when he was still employed by the government and they used to go on missions together, whenever one was affected by bombs and lost their hearing temporarily, they would flinch and smile and frown whenever the other was too loud or being too low to understand, or just perfect. It was better than signaling, mostly because Clint never thought he would need.

The irony.

“I came to see you.” She answers simply and takes another bite of her bagel. Sips some coffee and looks around the apartment. Clint doesn’t think she ever came here, so this begs the question: how did she know where he lived, how did she know how to sign language, how did she know he knew how to sign language. Sorry. Question _s_. Always plural with Nat.

As she is observing the apartment, he notices there is a new scar on her arm. Clint opens his mouth to ask how she got it, what she has been doing these days, and then remembers: he does not have the clearance to know. Before he still didn’t, this is true, but now he is a civilian.

It’s like a punch in his gut. The certainty that he’ll never be part of her life again.  Not this one. Not this one in which he met her and fell in love with her and fell out of love with her — well, he hopes he did, though Clint is quite certain that he never stopped loving Nat. When she looks back at him, Nat seems to knows exactly what he is thinking. Her eyes travel to her arm and then meets his eyes again. She looks at him with those hard eyes she uses to anyone who likes to ask too many questions about the pretty lady that works for S.H.I.E.L.D. and knows Aramaic and Latin, plus God knows how many live languages. The _none of your business_ kind of look.

No pity.

“What the fuck, Barton.” Is what she says and he starts laughing.

 .

Telling things to Nat is like telling things to himself. It’s like talking to himself while looking in a mirror and more than once a past girlfriend told him it just wasn’t healthy. Most of the girls he dated left because of Nat. The ones who didn’t leave, broke up with him because of her, minus, perhaps, Bobbi, but then she also became a cause for his break ups. It’s hard to have boundaries with her when they are so close. So alike.

Clint tells her about the Russians, about the girl, about the attack. Nat listens with the same face she does when she is given her mission and debriefed. Professional and neutral. She doesn’t nod, she doesn’t gasp, she doesn’t flinch. Only listens. He would do the same thing for her, the same way he would have learned how to sign for her. This is true love, people would say, but the thing is: they are too alike. They always forget this and then they crash and burn and lick their wounds, just to dance again.

 _It’ll never work_ , they say at the same time they think, _let’s try again, because it might_.

Nat’s only reaction comes when he confesses her he wrote a book. Her eyebrows disappear underneath her fringe and she stops herself from drinking more of his coffee. “Really? You wrote a book?”

“Yeah.” Clint says and shuffles a little awkwardly. “It’s not great or anything, it’s just—”

“You wrote a book.” Nat says, impressed and smiling. The true, genuine smile she gives only to a few people. “I would never have guessed.”

“C’mon, weirder things have happened.”

“Did they? I don’t think I’m aware, then.”

Clint scoffs and Nat sips her drinks, eyes glinting.

“It’s not like I’m illiterate.”

“It’s a book, Clint. And you wrote it. And you don’t hate it. Otherwise, it would have been deleted by now and you would never have told me.”

He shrugs. “Maybe.”

Not maybe. It’s true. Clint would have destroyed the notebook, bombed it, threw onto the ocean, burned it if he didn’t like it. He would be too embarrassed even to think about it to himself in the middle of the night, and would never have told Natasha Romanova, of all people, this. However, when he thinks of his book, and Katey Kate, and the pizza dog, and the future sequel, Clint feels a strange sense of pride, strong and so _good_ he didn’t know it was possible to feel this.

“Is it finished?”

“Yeah. I, uh, am thinking of a sequel.”

Nat smiles again. Truly smiles and maybe birds are singing, because she looks so pretty when she smiles like this. He wonders if it is him, guesses it must be the boyfriend. _I’m glad for you. I’m happy you’re happy_ , he thinks and opens his mouth to tell her this, when Nat says, before he can even start his own sentence:

“May I read it?”

Clint closes his mouth. Swallows the sentiment, that beautiful sentiment about happiness and being proud of her for becoming someone she is happy to be, and moving on with her life, finding meaning outside S.H.I.E.L.D. It tastes like ashes and self-consciousness, two things he sadly is very used to the flavor in his mouth. _I should’ve guessed._

“Sure.” He says, after a while. “Why not?”

However, Clint does not move. He stays seated mug of coffee in hand, staring at Nat. She stares back at him, eyes shining amusedly, and they both stay like that for a good minute.

“Would you like me to come by another day?”

“Yes, please.”

.

It’s not the Clint didn’t think that someone would read his book. It is impossible for someone to not ask when he says something about it. However, he wouldn’t have guessed it would be Natasha, whose favorite books are all the classics, from Austen to Dostoyevsky ( _in the original language_ ). It adds pressure to his work to be not good _but good enough_ — the kind of pressure Clint has always felt, since he was a child. He always knew he couldn’t be the best in class or the good kind of boyfriend girls always remember, but he could be good enough. Good enough to think ‘it wasn’t so bad, after all’. Not perfect, not the best in someone’s life ( _how could he? He was Clint Barton after all_ ), but not the worst that person could have had despite the odds.

He wants his book to be good enough for Nat. He wants to be the kind of book she reads and doesn’t remember for being so bad it is laughable, but to be that one she forgets because it was average.

When Barney returns, he finds Clint re-reading his own book madly, one hand clutching his mug — cold coffee to bring him back to reality — and checking for mistakes or typos or worse, inconsistency.

 _What are you doing?_ Barney asks him, the signs more familiar now that he is used to.

 _Nothing._ Clint answers back. _Just reading?_

_The thing you keep writing?_

_Yeah._

_Why?_

Clint does not answer. No signs, no head shakes, not even a shrug. He can feel Barney frowning at him as he looks back at the screen and wonders if it’s too silly for Nat to like.

It probably is.

When Clint takes a break from reading his story and keeps mulling over whether it’s worthy or not — it was the greatest thing he has ever done _before_ Nat asked him to read, and now it looks like the biggest mistake he has ever done in his life and should just delete it — Barney comes back into the apartment. Clint honestly thought he had just got back to his room using that machine they installed last week. Barney sits next to him on the sofa, maneuvering himself out of the wheelchair with practiced ease, and turns to him. “So” he starts, using his mouth and Clint has to stop watching dog cops to stare at him. “I heard you had a visitor today.”

“Barney—” He starts.

“Natasha motherfucking Romanova.” He says and Clint cannot hear him, but he knows he sounds both smug and awed at that. “Talk about bad news.”

“ _Barney_.” Clint warns.

“C’mon, you can’t say she is good for you.” Barney argues. “Just one visit and she is making you paranoid about whatever you wrote. You were _happy_ and she just made you feel like shit with her pointed comments ‘about the truth’” He uses quotation marks on the last part.

Clint rolls his eyes and averts them to the TV. “She didn’t say anything, ok.” He says after a while, after he finally finds the courage to stare back at his brother. It’s not like he is wrong — Nat’s visit did make him doubt everything he ever did, but she didn’t force him on that. That’s all him.

“Then why—”

“She wants to read it, that’s all. And I— I don’t think it is good enough. That’s it.” Clint can feel himself blush at that, as if he is six again and is trying to write a poem about Carol — not the prettiest girl in the street, but the most badass one ( _yes, that Carol. The astronaut, who is now dating Jess, who Clint dated not a while ago and who he cheated on_ ) — and feeling self-conscious about his lack of words to say to her that she looks amazing when her hair shines in the sunlight and she is kicking a bully in the balls.

“Then tell her no.” Barney says, simply. Like it is just that: simple.

However, it isn’t, is it? Because Clint wants to show it to her and wants her to like it. To be _good enough_ for Natasha motherfucking Romanova. She once fell in love with him, despite him being just good enough to her — the proof is here, with Matt the lawyer being everything she ever needed —, and that means something for a kid from nowhere, that once wrote a poem about Carol Danvers but never gave it to her because he was ashamed of it.

Clint gets up and leaves, saying that he is going for a walk.

.

Two days later, Nat is back. She brings something that smells and tastes delicious — honey and orange muffins from a bakery in Hell’s Kitchen, she says — and gives it to him as she enters the house, as a thank you. Clint, who has already left the document open for her, gets distracted by the prospect of food and it’s only when he is on his third muffin that he notices this was a tact for distracting him so he will not lurk around her and ask what she is thinking.

It’s actually quite brilliant.

Also, Nat knows he is a stress eater. And drinker. And fidgeter, if that is a thing. And when he sees her intently reading his book about Kate and Pizza dog, he starts eating the rest of the muffins to suppress questions, such as ‘Do you always look like you are dying from boredness when reading something you like?’ — _is boredness even a word? Can I use it in my book? It sounds like something Kate would say_ — or ‘In which part are you?’. Every time a new question pops, he takes a bite, and it turns into a game of pure regret. Regret he let her read Kate’s book and regret he is eating so much when he isn’t even hungry anymore.

Barney arrives suddenly and the way the door opens out of nowhere makes them both jump — or, at least, Clint does. Nat only looks like she has been caught watching porn, but quickly recovers —, alarmed. He stares from Clint to Nat. “So, what’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Clint says, too quickly. At the same time, Nat answers: “I’m reading Clint’s book.”

Barney turns to Clint. “You wrote a _book?_ ”

Clint turns to Nat, face full of betrayal. He stares at her as she asks Barney: “ _You didn’t know?_ ”

They both shrug. Clint didn’t really want for Barney to know he was writing a book, because Barney is too sincere and too much of a jerk to not make jokes about it. She stares at both of them, her eyes traveling from Clint to Barney’s face, before she just mutters something in Russian that he cannot understand, not even by reading her lips, and shakes her head. Then, she turns back to Clint’s book and becomes stone-faced again. Clint also turns her back to her and looks at Barney now, who keeps quiet for a moment, eyes on Nat.

“Wow. It must be _bad_.” Barney comments and Clint cringes at that. “Look at the way she looks reading your book, man.”

Clint doesn’t. That’s why he is not staring at her.

“Shut up.” Nat mutters, but Clint doesn’t see it.

“Maybe she looks like this as she reads any type of book.” Clint argues though he agrees that she looks like she is reading the most stupid thing ever and not enjoying herself while she’s at it. That’s why he is mostly avoiding looking at her now, though Barney does love to comment on everything, just like his brother.

“Shut up.” Nat says, louder.

“Is this what she looked like when you two fucked?”

“Oh my _God, Barney_.”

“I’m trying to read in here.”

“What? Maybe it’s something related to _you_.”

Clint opens his mouth to argue with Barney again, but then his brother just jumps. His head whip around to stare at Nat, whose hands are on the kitchen counter. She looks simply furious. Clint looks back at Barney. “Was she saying something?”

Barney shrugs.

He turns to stare back at Nat and sees her getting up. “What?”

“I can’t read with him here. He talks too much. And then he makes you talk too much.” She says, too fast, and Clint does not catch most of it. As if she felt that, she answers him again, this time signaling.

 _Ok._ He signs.

_Can I send a copy of it to my e-mail, so I can read it at home?_

Clint takes some time to signal for her to go ahead. He hesitates long enough to Nat look at him, eyes questioning _don’t you trust me?_ , she seems to be asking him. And this is the thing, isn’t it? He always trusted her. More than he should. More than he trusts Barney _right now_.

 _Ok._ He signals, finally, and avoids her as she starts to open some tabs. His eyes travel to Barney, who is instead looking at him. It’s his serious look, the one he gives when he is asserting things. Wondering things. Storing things for later. It’s not a good look. It means _trouble_. Clint already knows he will be sleeping with his notebook underneath his pillow.

Nat leaves soon after, kissing Clint on the cheek and sending Barney’s way a dirty look. She never liked Barney much and Clint soon learned, when they were together, to not talk to her when she was reading. Or propose sex. Or so much breathe.

“Hey.” Barney starts. “Can I read your book?”

“ _No._ ”

“Why not?”

.

Nat gives him a small review through e-mail after a few days. The subject is _Re: Clint’s book_ and it sends him chills. It says:

> _Clint,_
> 
> _I finished reading your book last night. I found some typos and errors that I checked — they are in red, if you’d like to see. I really enjoyed, even if it’s not my cup of tea. Kate is a very likable character and for someone who never seems to be around someone younger than thirty (unless you’re having sex with this person), you did a pretty good job with her. There is a_ to be continued _in the last page, and I hope you are writing. I want to read the next book too. Maybe a hardcover copy, signed._
> 
> _PS: Matt really enjoyed Pizza dog. I told him about it and he asked if there is a version in Braille._

Clint reads the subject more than once, stopping on her small, but a complimentary critic, and then on the information she gave him freely about Matt: he likes dogs ( _who doesn’t_ ), he wants to read her book and that he is _blind_.

 _Holy shit_ , he thinks and reads it again. _He’s blind_. Blind lawyer in New York City, dating Nat. And she told him about his book. She told him and didn’t tell it’s a draft from someone she knows.

And he is blind.

It’s not the kind of information Nat would give by accident. It’s there because she wants him to know. Clint can’t help himself: he googles _Matt lawyer blind_ and there it is, his entire information in some cases. The link to his professional site — he owns a firm with someone whose last name is Nelson — in which shows they have won several cases, most of them _pro-bono._ City heroes, one news site calls them.

 _How did you meet Natasha Romanova, Matt the lawyer?_ Clint wonders.

Later, much later, _much much later_ , Clint thinks of the “Maybe a hardcover copy, signed” thing on Nat’s e-mail. It sounds like a small encouragement for him to try and publish it, see if anyone is interested, but he soon dismisses it. Clint isn’t interested in selling his book, getting pressured on finishing his next one and then getting disappointed by low sales — or worst, terrible reviews. Still, it would be cool if anyone else would read it. Maybe teenagers and dog lovers.

Some part of him remembers that Nat never gives information by accident. Or says things she does not mean it. Clint soon forgets about it, when he starts writing again. Kate’s second part, after much planning and much more procrastination.

Four months later, he remembers it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I told I would post on december 2016 or january 2017, I didn't expect my life to become such a mess, but here we are. A year and a half later, but I'm back with this story. This is why I hate to write multichapter, you lose track, you lose everything.
> 
> I kept thinking of this one and finally got to finish. Clint is easy to write, though his relationship with Nat was not. I edited it many times, including on how to write the sign language, but now I can say it's ready and it's good.
> 
> I'm so sorry for taking so long to update this one. Last year was just too crazy and I had to begin again to write some stories before getting back to my old ones.
> 
> Hope someone enjoy this one, still!
> 
> PS: I chose Matt/Nat because in many scenes from the comic books, it's Matt Nat sees herself with most of the time, even in dreams and illusions.


End file.
